


This Heart, Wrought In Heaven

by ligaratus (ladyisak)



Category: Sunless Skies
Genre: Alternating Narrators, LGBTQ Jewish Characters, M/M, Non-Binary Gay Narrator, Other, Trans Male Narrator, both the narrators are Jewish, both the narrators are genderweird gays, not all the Jewish characters are white by today's standards
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:53:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23660374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyisak/pseuds/ligaratus
Summary: A Frail Mystic and a Refulgent Alchemist chronicle their journey across the High Wilderness. Odd-numbered chapters are narrated by the Mystic (🥀), even-numbered chapters by the Alchemist (⚗️)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 14





	This Heart, Wrought In Heaven

**Author's Note:**

> This is a very self-indulgent Sunless Skies AU starring an OC couple whom I've used in various fictional contexts over the years, mostly in journal and tabletop RP; their OU versions are the leads of a lengthy WIP that's unlikely to see completion this year. I can write fanfic of my own incomplete work if I want to. 
> 
> Thanks are due to my friend Catte for coming up with the title~

Names are such fickle, ephemeral things. They evaporate from the lips, vanishing like a soul consumed in a Law-Furnace; or else names sag with the weight of ages, anchoring their bearer to the world with a fastness what exceeds the grip of mortal flesh. That is to say, the names by which Albion bureaucrats know me are hardly relevant, and the name by which I am called to the bimah is too precious to give away. You, my dear reader, may think of me as the Frail Mystic; my close compatriots call me Lebed.

Speaking of myself thus, I realise I must myself be spoken of, and there’s something of a snag here — pronouns seem to exist orthogonally to my experience of myself as a living body ensnared in the Great Chain, but nevertheless both _he_ and _she_ are correct, though I bear no particular loyalty to notions of Manhood, nor Womanhood. I suppose I’m what in Vienna is called Uranian, an effeminate androgyne seeking a third way through the wild brambles of Sex. To others decreed men through an accident of biology who nonetheless live as women (or at least not as men), I prefer to be not dissimilar to a woman. To the effeminate dandies of the theatre and music-hall, and to the working-class painted youths among whom I came to realise what I loved in myself and in others, I’d rather be a fellow feygeleh, too queer and pretty, too delicate and vulgar to be what a Sequencer galekh would call a man.

Which is to say, any gentleman that wishes to bed me, or indeed love me, ought to refer to me as _he_ , but any ladies who prefer the company of other women, and the queens with whom I share so much in common ought to call me _she_. Everyone else can choose whatever they see fit. Anyone who sneers at Comrade Wilde and his preferred company ought to grow in the manner of an onion — with their head in the ground.

I am one of the Jews whose roots cling to the soil of the Pale of Settlement, who call ourselves Yiddish, who are called Ashkenazim by the Jews of Sefarad. My family are Galitzyaner to the bones, but I was born in the Fifth City, in the glum belly of the Neath. I accepted the Yoke of Heaven at the Doubt Street Synagogue in Spite. The first sunlight I saw came from a mirror-catch box gifted to me by one likewise born in the darkness. When London came to the skies, I ended up in the Reach, that blooming great Garden of Eden what languishes in the twilight of the High Wilderness, bereft of its Sun, the remnant mourner of the Garden-King.

Yesterday, I lived in New Winchester with the Refulgent Alchemist, my beloved and basherter, who is known to me as Asphodel. We shared a drafty garret too close to the train-yards, where I wrote penny dreadfuls and he studied the Correspondence; he used to be a doctor, but following some unpleasantness a few years back, he has withdrawn from medical practise. The details of what transpired are long and ugly, and now is not the time to tell that story; dredging up the memory of the scandal is still painful, for the Alchemist and for me — and much graver matters concern me now. I rather hesitate to commit such melodrama to paper, but I fear today may be our last day, and the journal I’m writing in will drift through the Wilderness, before a passing Curator with an eye for tragedy inters it in its hoard, where it will ie mouldering until Oylam HaBa.

Yet! The Alchemist and I draw breath; I do not intend to die today, and nor shall I allow the Angel of Death separate my beloved from me. The date is the twenty-sixth of Adar I, in the year 5665 since the Creation of the World, at least according to those who wept by the rivers of Cordova and Lemberg. According to the Alchemist’s pocket-watch, it is 4:30 PM; Shabbos begins in just under an hour, at 5:25 PM. We sit in the brig of a Windward Company Locomotive, still in disbelief at how we ended up here — and it is here and now that I start my chronicle.

* * *

Our cell in the brig is narrow and cramped, scarcely bigger than a closet. A square grille of wrought iron bars the exit. Beyond, a gaslamp burns sickly yellow in the empty corridor; its light does not quite reach us. The walls are unpainted metal, stained with slick patches of mysterious origin; the floor is gritty and sticky, and an awful smell of hangovers past lingers in the air. I cannot help but fancy that we are stuck in the throat of some great, sickened Leviathan.

There is only a single bunk of bare steel, lacking the courtesy of either padding or bedclothes, to say nothing of the luxury of a pillow. It takes up most of the cell and isn’t quite long enough to accommodate my full height. The Alchemist, who stands almost a foot shorter than I, has taken this as a personal slight on my behalf.

“You know, darling, the worst part, the _absolute_ worst part,” he says, as we sit side by side on the aforesaid bunk, “is that I really cannot imagine they did this on _purpose_! It just never even occurred to them that some people may be taller than five and a half feet!” He shakes his head in disgust and gingerly shifts position, wincing as his hip joint makes a sickly grinding sound. One of the Stovepipes wrenched his leg when we were apprehended, displacing the head of the femur within its socket without fully dislocating it. The Alchemist is prone to such subluxation, on account of unusually elastic tendons and ligaments — an anatomical oddity the two of us share, one of those strange symmetries of Creation that haunt the lives of HaShem’s Chosen.

“Well, perhaps, with any luck,” I say, “maybe we shan’t necessarily have to stay here long enough that I’d need to lie down? This is surely … well, not surely, but … couldn’t this be some kind of misunderstanding?”

“A _misunderstanding_ , darling?” says the Alchemist, archly. “With the bleeding Stovvies?”

“They did let you keep the Gladstone,” I point out, though with little conviction. “And they let me keep my walking-stick.”

“So they’re incompetent!” the Alchemist says, rolling his eyes. “We knew that already. There are fungal colonies in Traitor's Wood who knew the Stovepipes were incompetent before a human being ever set foot in the High Wilderness!”

His ire is not quite reaching me; I cannot quite make myself feel the full weight of the situation— now, as so often, I am in the grip of a strange fervour, a wild gaiety that rides me like an ibbur and then departs, leaving me a melancholy husk.

I put an arm around the Alchemist’s shoulders, pulling him closer. He looks up to meet my gaze, and flashes a soft smile that lights up his apocyan eyes. A sharp pin of yearning punctures my heart. He’s magnificent, beautiful, always and without exception, but in this moment he also looks like sheer hell — the deep umber of his complexion is ashen, except where a livid bruise blooms on a sharp cheekbone; his makeup smeared badly in the commotion of our capture and his hair, that spectacular cloud of inky coils, is a frightful mess; his kippah sits askew, the silver hairpins just barely holding it in place.

I cup his chin with my hand, and gently trace the curves of his voluptuous mouth, brushing away the blood that has spilled from his crooked nose like rust snaking along the flank of a locomotive engine. He sighs, eyes fluttering closed; the effort of eye contact takes its toll on him as on me. My heart thumps; the walls of the brig loom, but the veil of my fey mood obscures them. Here in the gloom, there’s only the promise of the Shabbos Bride’s approach, and I and my beloved.

I run my other hand down the Alchemist’s back, letting it come to rest at his waist. The Alchemist laughs softly, and moves to press his body to mine. There’s rather a lot of fabric between us; the thought of peeling it all off earths itself as a scintillating jolt between my thighs. I can’t help squirming. The Alchemist smiles like the Cheshire cat; in one graceful motion, he straddles my lap and rises up to kiss me. I take the chance to grasp hold of his arse with both hands, making him yelp and giggle. He breaks the kiss, chest heaving, face flushed.

“Easy, darling, easy,” he says, placing his hands on my shoulders. “I really don’t think this is quite the time for marital mitsves, no? I know you’ve been in that certain temper all week, but—“

I blush, and bite my lip.

“Um, sorry,” I say; the Alchemist places a stern finger against my lips.

“Hush, my dove,” he says. “I forbid you to apologise!”

He attempts to shift position, to better accomodate my wandering hands, and his hip joint grinds in its socket again. The Alchemist’s face twists with pain. I adjust my grip to brace his stricken hip; he slumps against me. A soft whimper escapes through his gritted teeth.

“Bloody hell,” he says. “The bastards got me good. What a miserable parcel of—” He cuts off, abruptly, and sighs.

I wrap him in an embrace, and he rests his head on my shoulder. Minutes pass; I listen to the rasp of his laboured breathing, to the hammering of my heart, and all at once, the full misery of our situation hits me like a sack of doorknobs. I start to cry.

The Alchemist sits upright, and looks up at me with wide, sorrowful eyes. Mutely, he dabs at my eyes with the frilly cuff of his sleeve. The lace is scratchy; his hands tremble. I pull him close again, clinging, dizzy, my heart beating against my ribs like a bird caught in a net. We freeze, swept up in a vortex of dread.

The Alchemist’s pocket-watch chimes, jolting us both from our stupor.

“Z’is Shabbos,” says my beloved, softly. He squeezes my hand. “Come on, darling. I’ve got candles and a box of lucifers in the Gladstone — it’s, ah. It’s better than sitting here, moping, no?”

I squeeze the Alchemist’s hand in response. He leans forward to kiss the tip of my nose again, then climbs off my lap. I watch as he retrieves his shabby black Gladstone bag from under the bunk and coaxes it open; the hinges creak. He takes out two pristine beeswax candles, swaddled in muslin cloth, and, after some vigorous rummaging, a small box of safety matches.

“I thought that …” I begin, then think better of it. The Alchemist quirks an eyebrow at me.

“Go on, darling,” he prompts. I blush and bite my lip.

“I thought you said you had lucifers,” I croak. The Alchemist gives a crooked smile; I search his face anxiously, terrified of finding even a hint of contempt or weary indulgence, but he merely looks sheepish.

“Force of habit, darling, nothing more,” he says. He sits back down beside me, and begins to unwrap the candles; I cannot help but fixate on the delicacy and dexterity of his spindly fingers, long and articulate like the limbs of a spider. “Pity I didn’t buy candle-sticks this afternoon … but how was I supposed to know we’d not be making it home? What a _bother_ , honestly.” I cautiously put my arm around him again. He leans against me, sighing softly.

“Lebed,” he says, suddenly. “I love you. You do know that, yes?” He looks up at me; there is a sudden, uncharacteristic worry in his eyes.

“Yes,” I say, and I pull him into a proper embrace. “I know, I know.” I pause, and then leaning in close, my lips to his ear, I whisper, “ _Ikh hob dir lib_.”

The Alchemist makes a noise in his throat, like a pleased cat. My heart thumps; I feel suddenly weightless, relieved of fear. The Alchemist finishes liberating the candles from their bonds of cloth, and looks at them, frowning.

“So,” he says. “Shall we just … stick them on the bunk?”

“It’s not our brig,” I say. “However, I would be worried about getting trapped in a burning locomotive—“

“I don’t think there’s much to burn in here,” says the Alchemist. “Except _us_ , of course. But it shan’t come to that, I should think.”

He strikes a match; he holds the flame against the blunt end of one candle, rotating it slowly until the wax starts to soften and drip. Unbidden, a memory of a Cousin’s face flickers in my mind’s eye, an unwelcome zoetrope. I look away. Moments pass slowly, golden syrup dripping from a spoon. The Alchemist squeezes my shoulder; I turn to look again — the candles are stuck fast to the metal of the bunk, two alabaster pillars of Shabbos.

“Shall you light the candles, sweetness?” he asks. I pause to consider the question.

“I don’t think that I particularly feel like I should be doing women’s mitsves today?” I tell him. “But then …” I stumble to an awkward silence.

The Alchemist looks at me, head cocked to one side. I gesture in the air; a lump rises to my throat; neither time nor intimacy have reduced my fear of treading too close to old wounds.

The Alchemist is not so different from me; at birth I had been decreed for the bris and tefillin, and he’d been decreed for the kindling of the lights and the offering of khallah; both of us found the initial arrangement unsatisfying. Yet, I’m content to be both and neither, and though the Alchemist is a delicate queen and a feygeleh, if he must be spoken of in such reductive terms, he ought to be spoken of as a man. He has gone to rather a lot of trouble to gain his baritone and the necessity of shaving, and to shed the need for complex arrangements of corsetry. I cannot help but worry that asking him to light the candles in my stead would be a rebuke.

“So, ah,” the Alchemist says. “Surely, yeshiva students don’t fetch the charwoman to light their candles?” He smiles; his eyes glint. I relax.

“No,” I admit. The Alchemist kisses my cheek.

“I appreciate your thoughtfulness, my dove,” he says.

He strikes a match, and lights the candles; raises both hands to shield his face.

“Borukh ato HaShem, Elohaynu meylekh ho-oylam!” the Alchemist intones, in a rolling timbre fit for a khazzan, fit for the music-hall. “Asher kid'shonu b'mitzvosov, v'tzivonu l'hadlik nayr shel Shabbos.”

“Umayn!”

The Alchemist heaves a deep, theatrical sigh, and lowers his hands. I put my arm around his shoulders again, and together we watch the flames dance.

“So, ah. Should we sing, darling?” he asks. “The acoustics here are rather substandard, but it might vex the Stovvies.” 

“Well, I cannot see how it’d _hurt_ ,” I say. “But … what shall we sing?”

“L’kha doydi, mayhap?” suggests the Alchemist. I pull a face.

“But, we aren’t at shul?” I say. “That’s a song that really ought to be sung at shul.”

“We aren’t at home, either, dearest,” he says. “But all right, I’ll hear you out. What do you suggest?”

“Shoylem Aleykhem’s traditional—“ I begin; the Alchemist snorts with laughter.

“ _Really_ , darling?” he says. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea. We don’t even have dinner ready.”

I open my mouth to reply, but before I can say anything, the Locomotive shudders to a stop, knocking all thoughts from my head. I catch hold of the Alchemist on reflex; we cling together. Outside, the gaslamp flickers, then dies. A darkness slinks down the corridor, followed by snatches of a great clamour of panicked Stovepipes. Our Shabbos candles flicker, gutter— and oh, miracle! The flames right themselves, and do not go out. Darkness skulks at the mouth of the brig, but does not dare enter.

A silence as thick as an eiderdown descends; my heart thumps.

“Bloody hell,” the Alchemist finally says, in a hoarse whisper. “Bloody _hell_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The transliteration of the blessing over the Shabbos lights is taken — and slightly modified based on my own opinions on what vowels ought to sound like — from the ArtScroll Transliterated Linear Siddur; I gave up trying to figure out what precise strain of Ashke pronunciation it was using, because while I could spend three days divining whether it was klal-sprakh, Litvak, Poylish or Ukrainish[1], I could also save myself the headache and cobble together a Frankensteinian atrocity. Forget it, Moyshe, it's fanfic, etc. Kibitzing, exegesis and corrections are all very much welcome, however. If I didn't want to argue about Hebrew and Yiddish phonetics, I would've simply rendered the blessing in the Aramaic script.
> 
> [1] For the record, the Alchemist and the Mystic both speak a dialect of Yiddish closest to the Theatre Yiddish standard.


End file.
